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In many real-world applications, reinforcement learning (RL) agents might have to solve multiple tasks, each one typically modeled via a reward function. If reward functions are expressed linearly, and the agent has previously learned a set…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-24 Lucas N. Alegre , Ana L. C. Bazzan , Bruno C. da Silva

This paper presents a novel approach to reinforcement learning (RL) for control systems that provides probabilistic stability guarantees using finite data. Leveraging Lyapunov's method, we propose a probabilistic stability theorem that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Minghao Han , Lixian Zhang , Chenliang Liu , Zhipeng Zhou , Jun Wang , Wei Pan

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have shown tremendous success in simulation environments, but their application to real-world problems faces significant challenges, with safety being a major concern. In particular, enforcing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Weiye Zhao , Rui Chen , Yifan Sun , Tianhao Wei , Changliu Liu

In safe offline reinforcement learning (RL), the objective is to develop a policy that maximizes cumulative rewards while strictly adhering to safety constraints, utilizing only offline data. Traditional methods often face difficulties in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Prajwal Koirala , Zhanhong Jiang , Soumik Sarkar , Cody Fleming

We consider the problem of reinforcement learning when provided with (1) a baseline control policy and (2) a set of constraints that the learner must satisfy. The baseline policy can arise from demonstration data or a teacher agent and may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Tsung-Yen Yang , Justinian Rosca , Karthik Narasimhan , Peter J. Ramadge

Program synthesis is the task of automatically generating a program consistent with a specification. Recent years have seen proposal of a number of neural approaches for program synthesis, many of which adopt a sequence generation paradigm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-23 Rudy Bunel , Matthew Hausknecht , Jacob Devlin , Rishabh Singh , Pushmeet Kohli

Reinforcement learning (RL) is attracting increasing interests in autonomous driving due to its potential to solve complex classification and control problems. However, existing RL algorithms are rarely applied to real vehicles for two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-04 Lu Wen , Jingliang Duan , Shengbo Eben Li , Shaobing Xu , Huei Peng

In safety-critical domains, reinforcement learning (RL) agents must often satisfy strict, zero-cost safety constraints while accomplishing tasks. Existing model-free methods frequently either fail to achieve near-zero safety violations or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Dominik Wagner , Ankit Kanwar , Luke Ong

Emerging applications in robotics and autonomous systems, such as autonomous driving and robotic surgery, often involve critical safety constraints that must be satisfied even when information about system models is limited. In this regard,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Subin Huh , Insoon Yang

Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training has enabled newer capabilities in models, such as agentic tool-use for search. However, these models struggle primarily due to limitations with sparse outcome-based rewards and a lack of training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Harsh Goel , Akhil Udathu , Susmija Jabireddy , Pradnesh Kalkar , Atharva Parulekar

Real-world reinforcement learning (RL) problems often demand that agents behave safely by obeying a set of designed constraints. We address the challenge of safe RL by coupling a safety guide based on model predictive control (MPC) with a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-30 Samuel Pfrommer , Tanmay Gautam , Alec Zhou , Somayeh Sojoudi

In this work, we address the problem of determining reliable policies in reinforcement learning (RL), with a focus on optimization under uncertainty and the need for performance guarantees. While classical RL algorithms aim at maximizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Nadir Farhi

We propose a novel framework to controller design in environments with a two-level structure: a known high-level graph ("map") in which each vertex is populated by a Markov decision process, called a "room". The framework "separates…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Florent Delgrange , Guy Avni , Anna Lukina , Christian Schilling , Ann Nowé , Guillermo A. Pérez

We propose policy gradient algorithms for solving a risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) problem in on-policy as well as off-policy settings. We consider episodic Markov decision processes, and model the risk using the broad class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Nithia Vijayan , Prashanth L. A

We consider the problem of learning the optimal policy for Markov decision processes with safety constraints. We formulate the problem in a reach-avoid setup. Our goal is to design online reinforcement learning algorithms that ensure safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Abhijit Mazumdar , Rafal Wisniewski , Manuela L. Bujorianu

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms aim to learn optimal decisions in unknown environments through experience of taking actions and observing the rewards gained. In some cases, the environment is not influenced by the actions of the RL…

There has been significant progress in deep reinforcement learning (RL) in recent years. Nevertheless, finding suitable hyperparameter configurations and reward functions remains challenging even for experts, and performance heavily relies…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Julian Dierkes , Emma Cramer , Holger H. Hoos , Sebastian Trimpe

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a general framework for adaptive control, which has proven to be efficient in many domains, e.g., board games, video games or autonomous vehicles. In such problems, an agent faces a sequential decision-making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Olivier Buffet , Olivier Pietquin , Paul Weng

Today's advanced Reinforcement Learning algorithms produce black-box policies, that are often difficult to interpret and trust for a person. We introduce a policy distilling algorithm, building on the CN2 rule mining algorithm, that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-06-14 Youri Coppens , Denis Steckelmacher , Catholijn M. Jonker , Ann Nowé

Safe reinforcement learning (SafeRL) is a prominent paradigm for autonomous driving, where agents are required to optimize performance under strict safety requirements. This dual objective creates a fundamental tension, as overly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Mahesh Keswani , Raunak Bhattacharyya